Finally Wear the Piano

Jung Hur’s artist statement from his 2015 solo exhibition, Finally Wear the Piano, at the Corey Daniels Gallery, Wells, Maine. The point of the exhibition, Hur explains, is to reveal the step by step process by which a thing becomes an image; that image becomes a symbol; that symbol achieves public recognition as, say, a logo; and finally that thing winds up on things like clothes that we wear in public.

Finally Wear the Piano

Finally Wear the Piano

My painting is about process – not just the process of making, but the processes of acquiring meaning in a culture. My content is more about systems than things.

I am interested in how many steps does it take to finally wear the piano – and what does thatprocess look like. This might sound surreal, but the way cultural systems create meaning is surreal. How does an object become a picture, and then a personal symbol, and then an emblem and then the illustration of this process? How did designers’ names become the normal stuff we wear around on t-shirts? Would we wear ads for cars or insurance companies? Particularly with fine art, I am interested in both how and why how this happens. My work is metaphorical but it is also specifically about the role of metaphors within this system where meanings change step by step.

A piano is a tool for music. It is used to make something. And yet it connotes many meanings. And when someone uses it as a leitmotif, it can take on any number of new meanings.

My symbol is a keyhole and key. It implies a visual lens, a door to pass through and different perspectives. It implies the relationship between looking and the process of perspective. A tilted circle becomes an oval – implying an angled position away from a flat circle. A shadow implies not only a specifically positioned light source, but the mediating object’s distance from the surface on which the shadow is projected.

The word “Finally” in the title is a lot like a shadow. It says a great deal about time and intention.

I use my forms and my keyhole symbol in particular to imply many simultaneous perspectives. Painting isn’t something that finds meaning alone. It is a cultural phenomenon. It requires society. It requires cosmologies and philosophies because it is about perspective. If there is only one perspective, there is no dialogue and there is no subjectivity. But we don’t live in a one-way world… at least, most of us don’t.

Painting, for an artist, is a physical activity. So is looking at a painting. It’s not passive. You bring your own subjectivity into contact with someone else’s. It’s a social phenomenon that happens in shared space.

So bring your own perspective. Bring your own ideas. Bring your own priorities. And bring your friends. It takes all sorts to look at a painting.

Jung Hur

Jung Hur is a painter based in Portland, Maine and New York City. He was trained in Seoul, South Korea and is represented by the Corey Daniels Gallery in Wells, Maine, E-Moderne Gallerie In Philadelphia, and Gallery BOM in Boston.